Technical workshop on soil health

Measuring soil health – get to grips with the rotational soil health scorecard approach, as developed for arable and grassland soils

Within the Soil Biology and Soil Health Partnership, we have been working to bring together a robust set of soil health indicators and testing them on-farm since 2017.

Join us for this technical workshop on soil health presented by AHDB and SRUC at Balbirnie Home Farms, host of AHDB's Strategic Cereal Farm in Scotland. We will be addressing the following topics:

• Why does soil health matter
• What does soil health mean to agronomists and farmers
• Using a soil health scorecard approach for rotational soil-health monitoring  
• Using a health scorecard to inform a longer-term management plan for soil health

Format of the event

9:00am Registration and coffee

9:15am Introduction  - Fiona Burnett, SRUC

9:30am AHDB GREATsoils and the Soil Biology and Soil Health Partnership -  Amanda Bennett, AHDB

9:45am AHDB Soil quality and scorecard and sustainability – Christine Watson, SRUC

10:00am General presentation about the farm – David Aglen, Balbirnie Home Farms

10:20 to 10:40am Travel to Balbirnie Home Farms

10:50am Demonstration on VESS using examples of good and poor soil quality – Paul Hargreaves, SRUC

11:20am Discussion of soil quality and use of cover crops/grassland - Christine Watson, SRUC

11:50am Earthworms as indicators of soil quality on two contrasting locations in the field – Jackie Stroud, SRUC

12:20pm General discussion of scorecard in the field with examples including one of the fields on the farm – Paul Hargreaves, Christine Watson and David Aglen

1:00pm Finish

Find out more:

GREATsoils | AHDB

Soil Biology and Soil Health Partnership | AHDB